East of Innocence (29 page)

I had picked up the discs that Terry had copied from a man who called himself Frank and whose rustic appearance in a chunkily knitted sweater and rubber boots was belied by his suburban Essex accent. He lived in a stone building in the middle of the countryside on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales and I found him down a rough track, two lines of baked mud with withered yellow grass growing down the middle, which scraped the bottom of my car as I bounced down the ruts. Terry had not told me his story but I had got the impression that Frank was a man with a complicated past, and that he would not be returning to Essex any time soon.

Frank was waiting for me and he came out of his house, if you could call it that, before I had the chance to knock. He had a long grey beard and did not seem pleased to see me.

‘You Daniel Connell?’

‘I am.’

‘Got a call from Terry. Says it’s okay to give you this.’

He was holding a carrier bag, which he pushed out at me as if it contained pornography he did not agree with.

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t thank me,’ he said belligerently. ‘Just take them and do what you have to do. And don’t say where you got them from.’

I wondered about his story and what it was he had run from, but I had had enough of hard-luck tales. Terry, Xynthia, Billy Morrison, Rosie O’Shaughnessy, even my mother; I seemed to have been swamped by a steady stream of undeserving victims and tragic figures, with the result that Vincent Halliday and Baldwin were both out gunning for me. I am a solitary man and thinking back over the chaos of the past weeks I wondered how I had managed to attract so much attention. Certainly, I did not believe that I had gone out actively looking for it; instead, it had been brought to my door by a procession of needy supplicants. Yet I was carrying the entire burden, and it was not a role I had asked for or that I relished. I should have been at my mother’s side; instead, I was about to go up against one psychopath in Baldwin, and one borderline case in Vincent Halliday.

I took the bag from Frank and headed back for Essex and whatever awaited me there.

Before I visited Xynthia, I had stopped at Gabe’s; I had not spoken to him for weeks and when he opened the door he looked as if he had spent that time drinking with the abandonment of a terminal alcoholic. His face was puffy and I believe it was the first time I had ever seen him unshaven. The drinking seemed to have made his eyes even paler than usual and he stood with one arm against the frame of the door as if it was all that was holding him up.

‘So the bottle won.’

‘Only the first round.’

‘You going to ask me in?’

Inside Gabe’s house there was little evidence of his internal disorder; a decade in the Army clearly instilled a discipline that even weeks of hard drinking could not shift. Everything was in its place, washing up neatly stacked on the draining board in his kitchen. I sat down and he made coffee, then he asked me about my mother and I told him everything. As I spoke, his look of hostile indifference changed and his eyes softened; underneath his self-loathing and regret, he still had time for other people. Not a lost cause yet. He asked me about Baldwin and I told him about Terry and the copies of the discs he had made.

‘You can stay here, if you like. Keep out of his way.’

‘Thanks. But I’m not running anymore. He wants me, he’ll find me at home.’

‘Daniel, this isn’t a fight you need to have. Let the police take care of it.’

‘They will. But I’m not hiding.’

Gabe looked at me and eventually nodded, took a drink from his coffee, the cup’s rim covering his eyes. ‘Your funeral,’ he said from behind it, the subject closed. Tough love and short shrift; that’s all you can expect from Gabe.

Now that Xynthia’s secret is out, that she told my mother that her only son was dead to prevent her running up against Halliday, she opens up to me. She tells me about life with Halliday, about the exciting, glamorous early days of cocktail parties and Ladies’ Day at Ascot and sun-soaked weeks on strangers’ yachts. But those days were as ephemeral as a four-month West End run, and soon the reality of Halliday emerged; the temper, the psychological
abuse, the suspicion and, behind it all, his business. Drugs, blackmail, violence and, worst of all, women.

‘Them days,’ says Xynthia, ‘there was this fucking daft idea that criminals were like Robin Hood or something. Like we were part of the counter-culture somehow. It was the drugs, mostly, like because we were doing them, and so were the bands and the dropouts, like somehow we shared something. But that lot didn’t have a clue. Scratch Vincent and you wouldn’t find a good-time guy. Scratch Vincent and he’d put you in a hole in the fucking ground.’

She walks to a cocktail cabinet and pours two small glasses of a sweet brown liqueur that I do not recognise but drink out of politeness. The effort of bending down and pouring makes her breathe heavily but she holds up her glass and says, ‘To a life of fucking regret.’ I smile but feel uncomfortable and, as she drinks and stares unhappily, I look around her cramped living room and her photos and realise that those few years, before the dream went sour, were probably the only good years of her life.

‘You want to know, want to really know about Vincent Halliday? I’ll tell you about Vincent fucking Halliday.’

I leave Xynthia’s flat after two more glasses; I’ve had enough of the sweet liqueur and dark, grisly revelations she is increasingly drunkenly spilling to me and, besides, I now know enough for what I have to do. I drive home through heavy rain and air that is turning cooler by the minute. Once there, I wait for the end of the thunderstorm. And for whoever is out there, looking for me.

30

I AM AT
the place where Rosie O’Shaughnessy was found, a clearing in a stretch of woodland next to a long straight B-road, which sweeps beneath overhanging trees through Epping Forest into the Essex countryside. It is quiet and I have a sense of foreboding that I cannot place; I do not believe in residual energies or spirits or ghosts, but standing in the cool shade I have a sensation of gathering, malevolent forces, which has me turning in a circle, looking into the darkness of the trees for what, I do not know. I hear a noise and a flurry of birds break cover somewhere in the murk and I am so spooked that I almost turn and run.

But I came here for a reason; I hold my ground. I am not a sentimental person but I have felt, over the past weeks, some kind of connection to Rosie, despite barely having spoken to her when she was alive. I have carried the secret of her death with me; I have done my best for her. Now I am standing where she was killed, where her life was taken away by arrogant men who believed they were above the law. If there is a place where I can pay my respects to an innocent, lively, vital young woman who deserved many more years of life, this is it.

There are still some ragged strands of yellow police tape attached to trees and trodden into the undergrowth and, although I am not sure of the exact spot where Rosie’s body was found, this feels close enough. I sit down with my back against a tree and think back over the events of the past few weeks, the people I have encountered and the tawdry stories I have heard. Terry Campion, Billy Morrison, Vincent Halliday, Baldwin, my mother; all part of the cycle of criminality and brutality that lies barely hidden underneath the surface of my neighbourhood.

It is cooler today, a wind blowing a chill through my shirt; the temperature has dropped ten degrees in one day and the leaves on the ground are cold to the touch and I shiver against the bark of the tree at my back. Where I am sitting, it is gloomy, the sun beyond the massed branches hidden behind low white clouds, and, although I hear the noise clearly, it is some time before I can make out who, or what, is approaching. My skin prickles in dread and I cannot stand, cannot run. From behind a stand of bushes I can make out the shape of a figure emerging from the dark of the trees, and as it gets nearer I see a face with a strange metallic semi-circle around its bottom half; the face is stained brown and green and only one eye looks at me, the other hidden behind some kind of plastic cover. The figure picks its way robotically over branches and roots and I stand up, the better to see exactly what it is. The skin on my scalp tightens in atavistic horror as I first irrationally think I am witnessing the emergence of some kind of grotesque man-made ogre from the forest’s innards; then I realise with a
sudden clarity who it is and I think, with a different kind of horror: I created that.

‘Hello, Gary,’ I say. The last time I had seen him he was barely conscious on the floor of the workshop underneath the arches; the damage I have done to him is dreadful. He looks at me through his one good eye with a desperate hatred.

‘You’re a fucking dead man,’ he says, the semi-circle of metal moving up and down with his lower jaw. This close I can see that it is attached by thin pins, which sprout from the flesh of his chin and jawbone and his entire face is horribly bruised and discoloured. That must have hurt.

‘Oh please,’ I say. ‘You had a look at yourself? You can’t want more of the same.’

But before he can answer an arm comes across my throat from behind; there is only one man I know with strength like this and I feel handcuffs cutting into the skin on my wrist and before I can make sense of what is happening my other wrist is cuffed and Gary walks towards me, pulls back a fist and punches me as hard as he can in the face. The arm that is holding me lets go and I fall backwards to the ground, unable to break my fall with my cuffed arms. Gary comes forward and starts kicking me in my ribs and shoulders and he lands one kick in the side of my neck, which closes my throat and makes my vision darken and I hear Baldwin say genially, ‘Now then, young Gary, that’s enough for the minute.’

I am down for minutes, sucking in great long-winded groans of air through my bruised throat. They are looking down at me, Baldwin, Gary and the man with the
drinker’s face. I still don’t know his name. They wait patiently and there is something I do not like about it. They are in no hurry. What will happen will happen. It has been decided. I am entirely at these men’s mercy and it has been too easy, far too easy. I have lost without even putting up a fight. I wonder how long I have to live. Minutes? Seconds?

Baldwin squats down next to me, puts his index finger into my mouth, pulls at my cheek. ‘You back with us, cunt?’ His finger is salty and large. He rubs the tip over my tongue, pulls it out before I have a chance to bite. I spit his taste out, disgusted. He wipes his finger on his shirt, smiles at me without emotion. I spit again on to the leaf-covered ground with the little saliva I can manage, struggle up into a sitting position.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I say.

‘Taking care of loose ends,’ says Baldwin. He looks around appreciatively. ‘Nice spot you chose.’

‘I’m going to make you suffer,’ says Gary.

Baldwin snorts, amused. ‘He’s not quite forgiven you, has Gary,’ he says.

‘Gary,’ I say. Gary looks down at me. ‘You’re a pussy.’

Gary steps in, foot back to kick. Baldwin, still squatting, puts out an arm, stills him. ‘Easy, Gary.’ He looks at me. ‘Sunshine, you just don’t want to help yourself, do you?’

I smile up at Baldwin, try to show some bravado. Baldwin beams a Hollywood smile back down at me. You can never win with this man.

‘Been following you,’ he says cheerfully. ‘Wanted a quiet
word. Right, Gary?’ Gary laughs shortly. ‘Thought that this might be the time. Away from prying eyes.’

This is where they killed Rosie. And suddenly I need to know how. Exactly what happened. Try to make sense of it.

‘How did you kill her?’ I say.

‘Ah, Rosie,’ says Baldwin. He tuts regretfully, picks up a handful of leaves, lets them fall. ‘Rose, Rosie, ring-a-ring-a-Rosie. Just one of those things.’ Says it like he’s describing a failed relationship. Just one of those things.

‘Can we hurry up please?’ says puffy drinker’s face.

‘No hurry, Banjo,’ says Baldwin. So that’s his name. Not one I would have ever guessed. ‘Gary’s been waiting a long while for this.’

‘Why? What had she done to you?’

‘Wasn’t what she’d done, was it?’ says Baldwin. ‘It’s what little Rosie saw, with those big eyes of hers.’

‘Terry?’

‘She took a shortcut through the park, did Rosie. Took a peek through the fence and saw us being, being…’ He searches for the word.

‘Robust,’ says Banjo.

‘Ah,’ says Baldwin, a pleased smile on his face as if he has just tasted something exquisite. ‘Just so. Saw us being robust with Terry.’

‘Who was a policeman.’

‘Hmm,’ says Baldwin. ‘That was unfortunate.’

‘So you killed her.’

Baldwin sighs. ‘Silly bitch wouldn’t listen. So Gary slaps her. She slaps back. Gary slaps harder. Rosie falls over, cracks her head. The end.’

‘She slipped,’ says Gary.

‘That’s what Gary likes to believe,’ says Baldwin. He leans closer, whispers. ‘It helps him sleep at night.’

‘Fuck you,’ says Gary.

‘Fuck who?’ says Baldwin. He stands up, turns to Gary. Gary looks away like a beaten child. ‘You fucking prat.’